Discovering the Internet
by tsillaa
Summary: Hermione shows the Internet to Harry and Ron, and they find something rather peculiar


_Author's Note: This was written as a creative assignment for a Fandom Studies class at university, and the point was to write fan fiction that is in some way reflexive on a certain aspect of fandom (it was intended to be reflexive on slash shipping, but I sort of failed at that, since I concentrated more on the story than the reflection part. Anyway, enjoy!_

"Hermione…" Ron started hesitantly. "What is that thing on your desk?"

He and Harry were visiting Hermione and were now looking around her bedroom. Ron was fascinated by all the muggle stuff that was lying around the room, even though he didn't know what most of them were used for.

Hermione followed Ron's gaze and stepped to her desk. "It's a laptop" she said, opening it up.

"What's it for?" Ron inquired.

"All kinds of stuff" Hermione replied. She pulled a chair to the desk and sat down beside Ron. Then she proceeded to wake her computer up and logged in.

"There are a lot of useful programs, like this one" she opened Word. "You can type things, and it appears on the screen. No parchments or quills, and if you make a mistake, you can just erase it, like so" she demonstrated it by typing in a few words and then deleting some of them.

"But what if you need to hand it in or something, like, on paper?" Ron asked.

"There's this thing called a printer" she pointed at a machine on the side of her desk. "It puts the words on the paper" she explained patiently. Harry was smirking, because the situation reminded him of his first experiences in the wizarding world.

"Fascinating" Ron said enthusiastically. "So, what else can it do?"

Hermione went on to show Ron the most useful programs, but he was getting bored with that and wanted to see something more fun, so then she showed him some games, but Ron couldn't quite get the point of any of them.

"And this" Hermione double-clicked on an icon "is the Internet."

At that, Harry put back the book he'd started reading to Hermione's bookshelf and sat down next to his friends. He knew some things about computers, since he grew up with muggles, but he hadn't used one since he'd got accepted to Hogwarts, and the Internet was unknown territory for him too, so, naturally, he was interested.

"Am I supposed to be impressed or something?" Ron asked when the window opened and all that could be seen was the Google logo in the middle of the screen.

"What's Google?" Harry asked curiously.

"It's a search engine. The Internet is a big pile of information about all sorts of things and if you search for keywords by typing them into Google, it will give you a list of the most relevant results. Very useful for research."

"What, like an encyclopaedia?"

"Sort of, yeah."

"Can I try it?" Ron asked excitedly.

"Sure, go ahead" Hermione said, turning the laptop towards Ron.

"I'm going to search foooooooor…" he started, with his fingers hovering over the keyboard. He looked around the room, looking for something interesting to check up on. He finally settled for "Books!" after not seeing much else in Hermione's room.

He typed those five letters very, very slowly, because he had trouble finding them on the keyboard. "Why aren't these in alphabetical order?!" he muttered to himself while hitting the last letter.

When nothing happened, he looked quizzically at Hermione, who helpfully hit the Enter key, and a few seconds later the list of results appeared on the screen. It was mostly links to online bookstores.

"Well, that was anticlimactic!" Ron said cynically.

"What did you expect?" Hermione laughed and clicked on one of the very first links that appeared. They were looking at the Amazon Best Sellers list.

"It's ridiculous, all the stuff these muggle folk read…" Ron said, reading a few titles while Hermione slowly scrolled down the page.

Hermione coughed. "Excuse me, but may I remind you that I, too, come from 'these muggle folk'. Muggle literature is quite fascinating, actually. I wish I'd had time to read some of these, but there was always so much to read for our classes at Hogwarts…" she paused for a second, distracted by the thought, but then quickly returned to the topic. "Plus, it's not like wizards don't have weird interests and hobbies…"

She would have continued on with the lecture, but Ron stopped her. "Okay, okay, I get it, sorry."

Ron was getting bored with the endless list of muggle books, so he turned his attention towards the ginger cat that was lazily walking around the room.

Harry and Hermione kept looking through the titles with fascination. Harry remembered reading a few of Dudley's books that the Dursley parents had bought in vain, and back in the day he quite liked some of the stories.

They were on about the fourth page when Hermione spotted something rather peculiar.

"What the…" she started, and a few seconds later Harry noticed it too. By the time Ron turned his gaze back to the computer, Hermione had already clicked on the link.

"It's probably just coincidence, right? There can be a whole bunch of people named Harry Potter…" Harry pondered.

"Yeah" Hermione replied absent-mindedly, while looking through the page. She clicked the pictures next to the description.

"I don't know, man, that _does_ look kind of like you…" Ron said, suppressing a laugh.

"Look at the titles!" Hermione exclaimed. "Sorcerer's Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban…"

"But… I don't… How?!" Harry couldn't put actual sentences together. He was quite shocked, and understandably so.

While Harry was trying to wrap his head around the situation and Ron was quietly laughing at his friend's utter shock, Hermione was clicking back and forth, looking things up on Google and reading everything that seemed relevant in getting to the bottom of the case.

After a few minutes of almost complete silence, Hermione had reached a conclusion.

"It seems that someone wrote a book about you. Well… I should say, about all of us, actually."

"What?!" Ron interrupted, no longer laughing.

"'The series chronicles the adventures of a young wizard, Harry Potter, the titular character, and his friends Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's quest to overcome the Dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who aims to become immortal, conquer the wizarding world, subjugate non-magical people, and destroy all those who stand in his way, especially Harry Potter'" Hermione quoted from the Wikipedia page for the series. "It's a novel written for muggles…"

"But isn't that, like, against wizard laws or something?!" Ron said in a horrified voice. "Won't the muggles find out about us or something, if we're just waving this whole thing in their faces?!"

"Muggles probably think it is all fiction. They can be rather ignorant that way…" Hermione replied.

"But still…" Ron said, not with any intention of actually saying anything else, but for the sake of being at least a little right.

"It's quite clever, actually. Someone made good money by selling this story." Hermione said.

"You look like you're almost disappointed you weren't the one who'd thought of it first!" Harry said, a little irritated.

"Oh, come on, cheer up, muggle kids everywhere admire you._"_

Hermione turned back to the computer and went back to scrolling through the result list for "Harry Potter" in Google.

Harry was only half-paying attention, when an unfamiliar word caught his eye.

"What's 'fan fiction'?" he asked.

Hermione clicked the link. "We'll see…"

The three of them started reading through the titles and summaries.

"From the looks of it…" Hermione said slowly "these are stories that the readers make up, based on stuff that happened. I mean, based on stuff that was written in these books."

"Isn't that just great…" Harry said in frustration.

"Listen to this!" said Ron, who took over the touchpad, and clicked on one of the titles. "'At that moment Draco leaned over and stared at Harry on the other side of the bed. He gave a sly smile and began to advance closer to Harry until he was nearly on top of him. Harry moved his head towards Draco. The two stared into each other's eyes.1'" Ron read the paragraph out loud in a mock-dramatic tone, trying really hard not to burst out laughing mid-sentence.

"Terrible writing, if you ask me…" Hermione said.

Harry was speechless for a few seconds. "Terrible writing?! Is that really the most relevant thing about that?! Are you being serious right now, Hermione?!" Harry was slightly raising his voice. "What the hell is even wrong with these people?! I defeat the darkest of dark wizards and they write stories like _THIS_?!"

While Harry was shouting, Ron had managed to read the whole story, and was now on the floor, laughing like he would be unable to ever stop.

Harry pulled the laptop closer to himself, found the search bar at the top of the page and typed "Ron Weasley", then clicked the Search button. It didn't take him long to find something equally embarrassing about Ron.

"'«Please, Draco. Be polite.» Ron couldn't help worrying. If his family didn't approve of Draco… he didn't know what he would do.2'" Harry started reading. "'Draco sniffed and looked slightly – no, extremely – insulted, «Weasley. I'm a Malfoy. We are nothing if not polite.» Ron scoffed, «You call your treatment of Harry, Hermione and me… and every other non-Slytherin 'polite'?» «We're polite to people who _aren't_ our enemies,» Draco rolled his eyes and sighed, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. Sighing, Ron said, «That's what I'm afraid of. The Weasley family used to be your 'enemy'.»'"

Ron wasn't laughing anymore. He sat back up on the chair and was listening, mortified. "Please stop…" he said weakly, but he knew Harry would keep going anyway.

"Come on, now comes the best part" Harry laughed. "'Draco raised an eyebrow flirtatiously, «Clearly that's not the case anymore. Or have you forgotten this morning? Last night? The night before? The night before that? EVERY night before that for the past year?»'" Harry looked at Ron. "_What were you doing_ EVERY night for the past year?!" he turned towards Ron. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"You guys are so immature…" Hermione sighed.

"_We_'re immature?! What about the people writing these stories?! What even is the point?!" Harry asked.

"Yeah, I mean, I haven't read the books, but if they're at all close to reality, I hardly think any sort of romantic or sexual relationship between me and Malfoy was ever implied… At least, that's not how I remember things." Ron quickly shoved Harry's hand away from the touchpad and closed the window, thus preventing Harry from reading the story any further.

"I find it fascinating, actually." Hermione said.

"Do you want us to find a story where you and Malfoy do the nasty?" Ron offered.

"No, thank you. What I mean is that people are so creative! I mean, these two stories are obviously badly written and ridiculous content-wise, but there must be some good stories out there! You know, with good storylines and quality writing… Adventures that never actually happened to us, but these people… they imagine them and write them down and share them with each other" she said enthusiastically.

"Yeah, but _why_ do they have to make me and Malfoy a couple?" Harry asked. "Why would they feel the need to write about people being together who are not actually together?!" he was utterly confused and annoyed.

"There's probably a reason for that too. Maybe the original story wasn't exciting enough for them, romance-wise, so they decided to take matters in their own hands…" Hermione speculated.

"You can't be serious, do you really find this whole thing _good_?" asked Ron in disbelief.

"Yes, actually, I do. And now if you don't mind, I'll be reading some of them, partly for my own amusement and partly to prove that it's not all bad." And with that she opened the window back up and started searching.

"Next thing you know, _Hermione's_ going to be writing fan fiction…" Ron muttered to Harry.

"Yes, and I'm going to write you getting hit in the head with a book!" she retorted.

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